Odd girl out - Joan Lingard

Tall Ellie Ferguson feels like the odd girl out - particularly when she is with her friend Isadora and her string of boyfriends, even more so when her mother acquires a new boyfriend. She retreats into fantasies about her pianist father, believed dead. Long conversations with his photo convince her that he is an ally in her own yearning to play the piano. Elderly Nicholas - waiting for a cataract operation but also an accomplished pianist - offers to teach her. Then her mother announces her remarriage and move to the new husband's house in the suburbs. Now far from friends, piano-teaching Nicholas and her familiar stamping ground, Ellie dives further into a fantasy escape to life as a musician in Paris. In the end reality must be faced - not least the truth about her own father. Painful, it nevertheless brings its own rewards.

Originally published as THE GOOSEBERRY in 1978 by Hamish Hamilton.